A paper by Professor Miguel León-Ledesma on ‘Population structure and asset values’ has received the 2017 International Centre for Pension Management Award.

The paper, co-authored with Kate Rybczynski, Lori Curtis, Stephen Bonnar (University of Waterloo), Jaideep Oberoi (University of Kent), and Mark Zhou (CMHC), analyses the effect of changes in the age structure of population on the prize of risky and non-risky assets. Its results are important for the management of pension systems, as it helps forecasting future returns in countries where the age structure is rapidly changing towards a larger weight of pension-age population.

The prize, endowed with 10,000 CAD, will be used to fund further research in the area by the team. The paper also received the Best Paper Award 2018 by the International Conference of Actuaries 2018.

The School of Economics will participate in a major study, funded by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), on marketing formal insurance to smallholder farmers in Burkina Faso through their urban migrant family networks. The study will be led by Dr Harounan Kazianga (Oklahoma State University) and Dr Zaki Wahhaj (University of Kent) in partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action and the micro-insurance provider Planet Guarantee.

Last year a pilot study by the same team demonstrated that the potential client base for formal index-based insurance in developing countries is substantially larger than those directly engaged in rural farming, with significant demand from urban migrants with rural family links. The present study will look at the impact of this marketing strategy on the livelihoods of both rural farmers and urban migrants. Its wider objective is to investigate whether marketing formal index insurance to urban migrants with rural family ties is a viable strategy for increasing use of formal insurance among rural farmers in developing countries.

The study, with a total funding of USD 430,000 over the period 2018-2022 is one of six projects worldwide funded by 3ie under its evaluation programme on agricultural insurance.

Photo: Drs Kazianga and Wahhaj in Ouagadougou in 2017 with IPA country director Nicolo Tomaselli and research assistant Oumar Sory.

by Marta Aloi, University of Nottingham, Huw Dixon, Cardiff University and Anthony Savagar, University of Kent. Discussion paper KDPE 1804, February 2018.

Non-technical summary:

A long-standing debate in macroeconomics is whether labor hours initially increase or decrease across the economy following a technology improvement. We develop a theory that reconciles both outcomes by observing that:

1. New firms enter the economy slowly after a technology improvement. That is, entry is not instantaneous as often assumed.

by Harounan Kazianga, Oklahoma State University and Zaki Wahhaj, University of Kent. Discussion paper KDPE 1803, March 2018.

Non-technical summary:

Large segments of the population in developing countries, especially in rural areas, have a high level of vulnerability to weather-related shocks, but have limited means to insure themselves against them. In recent years, microfinance institutions have experimented with insurance products, in particular rainfall index insurance, to address this need in different parts of the world. But the uptake of these products has generally been very low because of liquidity constraints and unfamiliarity with formal financial products.

On Friday 6 April, Professor Iain Fraser (School of Economics), Professor Ben Lowe (Kent Business School) and Dr Diogo Souza-Monteiro (Natural and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle University) are hosting a one-day inter-disciplinary workshop on consumer choice and food. The workshop brings together an exciting group of researchers from a range of disciplinary areas (eg marketing, environmental economics, agribusiness, psychology, development and social policy) who will examine various aspects of consumer choice as it relates to food. Based on the presentations the forum will cover themes from Consumer Food Security and Nutrition, Economics and Food Choice and Framing of Information and Consumer Choice. The keynote address is to be given by Professor Klaus Grunert (Aarhus University).